


Skin Hunger

by KuiperBeltArchive



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Centuries of slow burn, I googled the crusades for this, Loneliness, M/M, Mutual Pining, My boys just want love, Slow Burn, Temporary Character Death, apostate - Freeform, bottom!Nicolo, physical touch, top!Yusuf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:28:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25822897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KuiperBeltArchive/pseuds/KuiperBeltArchive
Summary: 5 times Joe and Nicky kill each other and 2 times they don't
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 3
Kudos: 147





	Skin Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> Joe and Nicky keep meeting during the crusades and the conflict is just too long....

Nicolo cries out, white hot pain scorches his abdomen. The armour, now worn from many days’ battle, has failed him. He meets the eyes of his murderer, dark and cavernous. His enemy. Thrusting his sword one final time, blood pours from his assailant’s throat, choking, gurgling. They fall to the ground in unison. “For my God,” he sighs, and smiles a saintly smile, teeth gritted through the pain. Yes, this is an honourable death. 

***

Light blinds Yusuf, the golden glow of the morning sun scalding his retinas as if emerging from a cave after many ages. His fingers gingerly explore his neck, still moist with blood, his own blood, but the skin somehow remains unbroken. He grunts, pushing himself up, a figure’s shadow falls over him. The figure bears the red cross of the invader, torn and exposing pale undamaged flesh beneath. The man shouts something that Yusuf cannot not understand, and he meets the darkness again. 

***

Many deaths by his enemy’s sword and many battlefield’s later. Armour barely holding together. Their swords clash as they jab and parry, spin and slice. Their breath has become ragged and their rage has endured in a dance that over time has become graceful. Distracted, Nicolo’s furrowed gaze meets a blade erupting proudly from his sternum. He sighs in anguish; this painful cycle never ends. Why can’t he just die? The unnamed Maghrebi turns on his ally who dealt the blow, decapitating in a single blow the man who stole from him this small victory in this eternal, personal war. 

Nicolo blinks again, awareness resurfacing like a bubble rising through water. A dark hand is extended out to him. A hand of truce, please let it be over. Nicolo takes it. Days often passed where he longed to see this man; though he couldn’t die, he still needed to be reminded that he’s alive. The stranger’s eyes flash with anger, crushing Nicolo’s hand in a vice grip, a broken cry escapes him, and another blade is buried in his guts. Nicolo begs with lonely eyes, he perhaps sees something soften in those of his counterpart before nothingness rises to greet him.

*** 

With Jerusalem captured, Yusuf leads skirmishes against the crusaders, each time his men die, each time he slays this white djinn, this devil who won’t die. The horrors of his people’s slaughter fresh in his mind. This devil has become a symbol of that. Once his body lies still before the gates, the crusaders can be cast out from the walled city. But the man will not die. All he knew during his mortal life has turned to ash and dust, bodies rotting in the ground. He thrusts his blade into the stomach of the Genovese man and watches the light die in him. He longs to rot in the ground next to his family and be taken to whatever paradise lies beyond, though he bears little faith in that now. 

Bodies litter the fields outside Edessa. Yusuf, though he wears a different name now, leads the siege to regain the city. And he sees him again, his deadly companion whom he knows barely beyond the fatal kiss of his blade. The two immortals whose bodies by all rights should be riddled with arthritis and cancer, remain supple. Yusuf wonders again why they fight, why Allah has not shown himself to him. No holy voice, no command, only undying life, and decades long agony. He bleeds out next to the devil man and reaches out to him. He squeezes his hand gently, “Yusuf,” he chokes out.

“Nicolo,” the dying man squeezes back, before the grip weakens and the mighty claw of death drags Yusuf back down; a drowning man who has to asphyxiate to breathe again. 

*** 

Nicolo hugs himself, rubbing his face on his arms, to simulate touch. The Levant crawls with danger; people have begun to recognise him. The thought of capture squirms at the back of his mind as he walks, head low, towards Iraq and Persia, to search for Yusuf, to be killed again by someone who understands his empty heart; saudade for death. Hands seize him. He recognises one of the faces as belonging to the great grandchild of a long dead friend whose family he’d watched over. A favour met with betrayal. 

More deaths later than he could count on his two hands he hears gasps and spluttering outside. Murders so quiet they could only have been administered by a professional killer, his heart swells. The door to his cell bursts open, a haloed figure stands bloodied and angelic in the firelight. Freed from his manacles they run then into the desert, seeking refuge in an abandoned farmhouse. They barely speak but passive aggression turns to lust turns to love making. Hungry and desperate, Nicolo rises over Yusuf, panting “I want every part of you inside every part of me,” though he doubts his words will be understood. His fingers claw desperately for purchase. A sinful act that Nicolo doesn’t need to pray that his holy silent God can forgive him for. He has already been forsaken. 

He has to leave the Levant. Coming to, sweaty and clear headed he grabs his sword to slay his lover. In his death throes Yusuf pins Nicolo against a wall, breaking his neck. By the time he comes to, Nicolo is nearly fully clothed. He throws a sheepish smile behind him and disappears through the doorway. He has to leave the Levant.

***

Tales of a fierce warrior who couldn’t die have brought him out this way, he lies to himself. The great warrior, Saladin, has retaken Jerusalem. Yusuf can tell that power will swing like a pendulum for the rest of time; he saves those he can, mourns those he can’t. He patrols the Mongol border for several years, hearing tales of the one he’s spent years yearning for. The Jin dynasty pays handsomely, so he doesn’t want for money, only company. 

He shields his eyes from the noon sun, scanning the front line from the crest of a knoll, a man rises up, from the battlefield, is it him? A blond man with a hooked nose, Yusuf already knows the colour of his eyes. He charges into the fray, beheading Nicolo’s assailant in one fell swoop, and kissing his lover in the heat of battle, as the bodies fall around them. 

***

That night in Nicolo’s tent, they lie tired and sweaty on his sleeping mat. Nicolo replays the sensation of Yusuf’s hands on his body in his mind, the push and pull of his lover inside him. Reaching under his mat he pulls out a knife, half-heartedly swinging it at Yusuf’s neck. Yusuf catches his wrist in mid-air and pulls the dagger from his shaky grasp, discarding it across the tent. They both know if he’d have meant it Yusuf would be dead by now. Yusuf’s warm eyes reassure Nicolo, he lays his head down on Yusuf’s chest. “I’m tired,” he sighs in broken Arabic. 

“Me too,” replies Yusuf in accented Italian. He kisses Nicolo on the crown of his head and they fall into a deep slumber.


End file.
